Palin’s coaches are tough political operatives who helped George W. Bush become president of the United States, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

For the sole vice presidential debate Oct. 2, the Alaska governor is being coached by Mark Wallace, Bush’s deputy campaign manager in 2004 and Tucker Eskew, a Republican strategist at the forefront of Bush’s primary battle in 2002 against Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the current Republican presidential nominee.

“There aren’t a lot of experienced, skilled political operatives around who can work at the presidential level,” said Republican strategist Mark McKinnon. “It would be very hard to put together a presidential team on the Republican side without hiring former Bush hands.”

Palin has little foreign or federal policy experience while Biden, of Delaware, is a veteran senator and foreign policy expert.

THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION

While US citizens remain hypnotized by events in the Middle East, and by Islamic terror in general, the creeping terror is already upon us. Nothing less than the eradication of the United States as we have known it for the past 231 years.

Global economists would have us believe that due to the dollar’s recent slide, and possible collapse, a drastic solution is needed; the incorporation of Mexico and Canada, along with the US into a single soveriegn state. Canadian and US dollars, along with the peso would be abolished and replaced with something called the ‘Amero.’

Borders would become irrelevant, and internal immigration between the three countries commonplace. This, they argue, would stabilize and augment the economies of all three previously independent nations.

It would also effectively replace current US laws, override Congressional oversight and remove the Supreme Court as the ultimate authority. In effect, this is an executive decision to dismantle the United States in order to allow multinational conglomorates free reign to squeeze as much profit as possible from their goods and services.

But it screws the common people. US workers would literally be forced to compete with third-world immigrants (who would be free to vie for jobs under this plan). Wages would drop dramatically.

This is not a joke, nor is it some pipe-dream of world business; it has already been set in motion.

Unfortunately, nearly every major presidential hopeful in the upcoming election supports this change in our government. Why shouldn’t they, it gives nearly dictatorial powers to the president, and renders the other branches irrelevant.

My recommendation is to vote Democratic because of their opposition to the Iraq war. The Republican plan for continuation of that war only helps drive us deeper into debt and closer to the NAU.

You may want to contact your congressperson, too. It’s their job that is in danger of being outsourced to Mexico.

“I heard somebody say, ‘Where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.”

Nelson Mandela, 89, South Africa’s first black president and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is still very much alive.

Although nobody outside of Bush’s inner circle is truly sure of their plan, it is believed that Cheney favors a gradual escalation of hostilities to be followed by massive air strikes using tactical nuclear weapons.

Their only problem may be getting Congress to go along with the plan. Even if they don’t, expect it to be set in motion unless funding is completely cut off.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counter-terrorism chief who is now a security anaylist, said: “The decision to attack was made some time ago. It will be in two stages. If a smoking gun is found in terms of Iranian interference in Iraq, the US will retaliate on a tactical level, and they will strike against military targets. The second part of this is: Bush has made the decision to launch a strategic attack against Iranian nuclear facilities, although not before next year. He has been lining up some Sunni countries for tacit support for his actions.”

The president has obviously made a comittment to support Sunnis over Shias. This begs the question, why did we oust Saddam Hussein in the first place?  

Although the al-Maliki government is thought to be rudderless and ultimately untenable, Crocker will report that replacement is inadvisable at this time. Neither he nor Petraeus will recommend anything more than a symbolic reduction in troops.

Petraeus has hopes for elected office once his military career is over, so it is incumbant on him to make the President’s plan work.

Neither the General nor the Ambassador plan to meet with Bush again before their Congressional appearances, in order to preserve the “independence and the integrity of their testimony.”

The question now is whether Congress will continue to support the conflict out of fears of job security, or whether they will say “enough!”, and begin to end George Bush’s folly.

Chesney indicated that there were questions of the legality of the Bush administration’s plan, as well as whether or not it could be easily determined that those who failed to match their social security numbers were truly illegal immigrants.

The Bush plan has been put forth as a means of toughening a 1986 law that subjects employers to criminal or civil prosecution for knowingly hiring illegals.

Unfortunately, this plan does nothing to enforce that law. Instead, it allows non-complying employers to get off scot-free simply by discharging the workers. The undocumented employee bears the entire onus of the new rule. There is nothing about deportation of violaters, only a law that says they have no right to work in this country. Does the government think that they will voluntarily migrate back to their homelands?

Of course not. They will stay here and swell the ranks of American criminal society. Then, when they are caught, they will be deported, since they are illegals. After that, they will return across our porous border.

And what happens to the employers? Nothing but a slap on the wrist. These are the people that we should be cracking down on. The workers come to the US looking for employment. So long as it remains open to them–even under the table–they will continue to come in droves.

“Iran…is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. …Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent and target Israel. …Iran is sending arms to the Taliban. …Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have comitted no crimes. …Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

“Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.   We will confront this danger before it is too late.

“I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

Wow. Sounds just like the run-up to war before the Iraqi conflict, doesn’t it? From the sound of this rhetoric, we’re already engaging Iranian forces on the field of battle.

In a resolution passed by the Senate just before the August recess, Bush recieved a 97-0 vote of confidence that will allow him to expand the War on Terror whenever he chooses.

Yesterday, he asked for a further $50 billion to prosecute the war. 

Bush and his people come from a group of old-time Cold Warriors who believe that not only should we have stayed in Vietnam, but that given enough time, we would have won that conflict. Again, he fails to mention that the larger Cold War itself ended in just over a decade following the fall of Saigon.

He stated that should we leave Iraq “the enemy would follow us home,” and acclaimed the US military as the “greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”

As if we did not already all know it, Bush then declared that we would never leave Iraq so long as he is President. Because he is right. Because everyone else is wrong.

In 2006, financial and credit card companies gave $7 million in presidential campaign contributions, and banks $25 million. The biggest recipient of this largess was Hillary Clinton, with $378,000.

In no way, however, does Clinton deserve any more blame for America’s growing credit problem than any other candidate. The new bankruptcy law that requires filers to pay off much of their credit card debt–effectively making them debtors to the credit institutions for years, if not the rest of their lives–was initially supported by Joe Biden and John Edwards as well, and recieved the support of 36 Senate Democrats. President Bush also pushed hard for it’s passage.

In 2005, when the bill came up again, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich and Chris Dodd voted against it, although Obama voted against an amendment that would cap interest rates at 30%. Clinton did not vote.

At this point, 40% of American housholds spend more than they make per year, the average houshold credit card debt is $10,000, and total US consumer credit card debt is $880 billion. That figure has increased 100% in the last 40 years.

The credit card industry is virtually unregulated, nationally. Companies can charge and change interest rates at will. Incomprehensible disclaimers insure that consumers cannot understand terms. And over 4 billion new offers are sent out in the mail every year. While states can regulate the industry, two, South Dakota and Delaware do not, and almost every credit card company is based in one of these two states.

Alone among all current presidential candidates, only John Edwards has pledged to do something about predatory loan practices, despite his yes vote in 2001.

Most politicians are too reliant upon contributions from these companies to even concieve of doing anything to anger them. It is another case of selling out the American people in favor of corporate special interests. Our jobs, our liberties, our very way of life is being slowly eaten away in favor of the freedom of big business to turn a profit.

Those whom we depend upon most to keep us secure have perverted the very meaning of security and turned it into a euphanism for world conquest, both militarily and economically. The American citizen has become a pawn in the game of wealth and power, an old shoe on the board of World Monopoly.

Although Bush laid claim to compassion when originally running for the office of president in 2000, it has taken 7 years to surface.

From The Guardian:

A president transformed

Libby Pays The Man

The only thing left for a real pardon to accomplish is the restoration of Libby’s law license.

House Democratic leaders have said that their priorities “do not include the renewal of fast-track authority.”

Instead, their legislations on this issue will lean more toward extending relief and increasing the benefits of globalization to Americans who have been victimized by free-trade agreements. They also plan to tighten up on existing deals such as NAFTA, and to crack down on countries with a history of abusing such agreements, such as China.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice recommended yesterday that Congress renew Bush’s authority, claiming that it is “an important diplomatic tool that has proven essential to bringing foreign leaders to the negotiating table and advancing our nation’s broader foreign policy interests.”

Of course Rice meant that this authority is the carrot to the military stick in the game of political brinksmanship that the administration insists on playing with the rest of the world. It really is not a good enough excuse for allowing powerful US multinationals to fast-track jobs abroad for profit.

Administration policy is killing the middle-class even as the US GDP continues to rise. If America is so much better off under these policies, where is the money going? Certainly not into the pockets of the average US citizen.

Cheney has refused to comply with the Oversight Office since 2003.

“This is a little bit of a nonissue,” (White House spokeswoman Dana) Perino said at a briefing dominated by the issue. Cheney Is not subject to the executive order, she said, “because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he’s decided that he should.”

So now the White House is deciding who must obey the law?

“Some political forces in the United States still use Cold War thinking and aim to provoke conflicts between different ideologies and social systems,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement after Bush’s speech in Washington.

Qin went on to comment that the US should not interfere in the affairs of other nations.

The monument seems to be more of a celebration of the financial success of elitist capitalism than anything else, since no mention was made of the destruction of lives, governments and cultures wreaked by those espousing such beliefs. A memorial to all of those who died in the Cold War period would have been more pertinent and conciliatory, despite the President’s high-flown rhetoric.

Bush said the statue “reminds us that when an ideology kills tens of millions of people, and still ends up being vanquished, it is contending with a power greater than death.”

Hmm. Does he mean the power of God? If so, one must wonder when we will erect a memorial to all of the people killed in His name. After all, there is no cause which has induced so much death throughout all of history.

The Victims of Communism Memorial is another divisive reminder that we are governed by people with an “us against them” mentality. And “us” is God (not Allah), elite capitalism, and imperial control. “Them” is everyone who doesn’t agree with this policy.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution–and the country,” the court panel said.

Al-Marri has been held in solitary confinement since June 2003 as an “enemy combatant.” He was originally arrested for credit card fraud, but was placed under indefinite military arrest after government agents claimed to find evidence of links to al-Qaida on his computer.

The Court’s decision validates the arguments of al-Marri’s attorneys, who claimed that last fall’s Military Commissions Act did not repeal the writ of habeas corpus.

“This is a landmark victory for the rule of law and a defeat for unchecked executive power,” al-Marri’s lawyer, Jonathan Hafetz, said in a statement. “It affirms the basic constitutional rights of all individuals–citizens and immigrants–in the United States.

Bush administration officials do not agree with the decision and plan to appeal.

Lets all hope they lose that appeal; it is only a short step from seizing and holding legal foreign residents to giving citizens the same treatment.

Over the past week, US officials have made several disturbing comments indicating that there will be no end to the war, despite Congressional and public opposition, and that the effects of President Bush’s “surge,” for good or ill, matter little in long-term administration planning.

…the United States (is) looking for a “long and enduring presence”, under an arrangement with the Iraqi government.

This is according to defense secretary Robert Gates. Also according to Gates:

The Korea model is one, the security arrangement we have with Japan is another.

The US has had troops in both countries for more than 50 years.

Last week the White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed that President Bush wanted a lengthy troop presence in Iraq. “The situation in Iraq, and indeed, the larger war on terror, are things that are going to take a long time,” he said.

The building of US military bases, at a cost of more than $1 billion per year, and the ongoing construction of the largest American embassy in the world in Baghdad indicate that the administration has no intention of ever leaving.

General Anthony Zinni stated that the building of permanent military bases was “a stupid idea and clearly politically unacceptable.”

Last year, Jimmy Carter remarked:

There are people in Washington…who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq…the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region.

It’s all very chilling, but not unexpected. Does anybody want to bet that when September comes Bush once again gets everything he wants? That we will still be in the same position this time next year?

“I do believe that it was the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel, ” O’Donnell said when questioned on whether she thought the US government was behind the collapse of World Trade Center.

“I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center tower which collapsed in on itself–it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved. Miraculously, the first time in history steel was melted by fire,” she said.

“To say that we don’t know that it imploded…is beyond ignorant. Look at the film, get a physics expert from Yale, from Harvard, pick the school. It defies reason. Imagine if somebody could convince you of that.”

With these remarks, in support of conspiracy theorists, the outspoken co-host of the ABC talk show “The View,” began to pave her way off the show.

That path was cemented when the liberal O’Donnell and co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck, a political conservative, had a heated exchange last Wednesday over the Iraq war. O’Donnell criticized US policy by saying, “655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists?”

All of these remarks were made on national television.

While I personally don’t agree with conspiracy theories regarding 9/11, I do believe that O’Donnell has every right to express her opinion in a public forum.

To those of you who would say that ABC has every right to scrag O’Donnell because they own the network, I would say that they are suppressing public opinion because they have another agenda. A corporate agenda that backs Bush administration policies whatever they may be.

Why else would they ditch someone who has sent the ratings (profits) for the show through the roof? Patriotism? Give me a break.

“Al-Qaida’s leadership has said they have the right to kill 4 million Americans, 2 million of them children, and to exile twice as many and to wound and cripple thousands.

“America is fighting this enemy in Iraq.”

Just the day before, President Bush had warned reporters that the terrorist organization was a danger to their children.

What gives here? Has the al-Qaida leadership suddenly developed a plan to suck the lifeblood out of our country by murdering our kids? Has the Bush administration discovered previously unknown intelligence of this particularly horrific scheme? Or is Dick just raving about the worst scenery he can imagine? One calculated to strike fear into the hearts and minds of those who might waffle on the war?

When do the terrorists begin to feed us our own hearts?

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell also predicted a policy change, saying that Bush would lead the shift in his own time.

So far, the US has spent over $300 billion on Iraq military operations.

Debate over the war will resume in September after Gen. David Petraeus announces whether or not Bush’s “surge” strategy is working. There will also be an independent assessment made by the Iraqi government at that time.

If Pelosi thinks Bush is going to change his strategy now, after losing the confidence of the American people, the opposition party, and much of the support of his own party, she has to be dreaming. There may be a policy shift, as Sen. McConnell suggests, but with Bush leading the way, that shift is probably going to be something along the lines of a military assault on Iran in order to make the results of the September discussions moot.

No way is Bush going to be dissuaded from fighting his “war on terror,” even if it means escalation of that war. Does anyone think that Petraeus or the Iraqi government is going to present a report that is negative to the current Bush doctrine?

It ain’t gonna happen.

Asked whether he was prepared for the inevitable backlash from the deep-pocketed US medical insurance companies, Moore admitted “they may be a scarier force than Karl Rove or George Bush” but added: “It is my profound hope that people will listen to this film.”

Moore has landed in trouble with the Bush administration for taking a group of ill 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba during the making of “Sicko in order to receive medical treatment. A government investigation has been launched in order to examine whether or not the filmmaker broke US laws prohibiting commerce with the communist nation.

Say what you will about Michael Moore–FOX NEWS has already endorsed his prosecution–but nobody can debate the fact that the American health care system is a sham. The wealthy can afford care, and the destitute have it given to them by the government. But the middle class is screwed by the insurance companies, whose motives are to charge more for less in order to satisfy their shareholders.

The profit motive must be removed from the US health care system.

1. Barack Obama – Centrist position on unity in American politics draws support across party lines, as does anti-war POV. Resonates well with independents and has influential backers. His biggest challenge will be to get the Democratic nomination. If he does, poll numbers show him defeating any Republican nominee.
2. Hillary Clinton – Easily tops other Democratic nominees in terms of party and financial support. Not so popular to the general electorate, though. Is seen as somewhat right-of-center and shows preference for Executive power. Has the best chance of securing the Democratic nomination, but the numbers show she could be vulnerable against Giuliani.
3. Rudolph Giuliani – Current polls leader among Republicans, he is their best chance to retain the White House. While his stance on issues such as abortion and civil rights will hinder his nomination, they show him to be more than a puppet of GOP control. Hurting him in the general election will be his pro-war viewpoint.
4. John Edwards – Progressive candidate has the most complete agenda of anybody in this race with a realistic view of winning. Polls show that if nominated he would mop the floor with any Republican contender. To get the Democratic nomination, though, this anti-war candidate would have to overcome both Clinton and Obama, and convince the electorate that he is not a radical leftist.
5. John McCain – True successor to the Bush administration, were he elected policies in this country would not change very much. He has a chance to win the nomination in the ultra-conservative GOP, but because of his warhawk status, would probably be beaten by any of the Democratic frontrunners.

Conclusions – The Democrats will probably win this election no matter who is nominated, unless it comes down to Clinton v Giuliani. If that is the case, it will be a very close election.

The best thing the GOP can do for themselves is to nominate Rudy, but if the most important thing to them remains wedge issues, they will go with a likely loser rather than change philosophy.

Manfred’s Best Bet: Hillary Clinton

Manfred’s Best Recommendation: John Edwards